A second woman has made allegations of sexual assault against Ryan Hartman, who was convicted last month in the so-called sexsomina case, the Ontario Superior Court heard Tuesday.

Crown attorney Claudette Breault said that a woman approached police Monday on the eve of Hartman’s bail hearing to say she was assaulted by Hartman when she was 15 years old in 2011.

The offence was alleged to have occurred after Hartman assaulted Bekah D’Aoust at a house party in Oxford Mills in February of 2011, Breault told the court.

The prosecutor raised the new allegation during a hearing to determine whether or not Hartman should get bail while courts hear his third appeal of his sexual assault conviction in the 2011 case.

She argued that the court should hear testimony from the police officer who interviewed the new accuser.

But Hartman’s lawyer, Chris Sewrattan, strenuously opposed allowing the testimony, noting Hartman has not been charged with any new crime and, indeed, the police have not even launched an investigation into the allegation yet.

“It’s an allegation without a charge,” Sewrattan said.

Justice Robert Beaudoin agreed with Sewrattan, saying the officer’s testimony would be “double hearsay.” He said he was also concerned about the timing of the allegations, coming as they did the evening before the bail hearing.

The complainant had eight years to make her allegations in the high-profile case that has received a lot of media attention, Beaudoin said.

Beaudoin listened to three hours of arguments by Breault and Sewrattan on the merits of bail for Hartman, the suitability of his guarantor and the likelihood of the appeal succeeding.

Sewrattan is appealing Justice Kimberly Moore’s decision to reject Hartman’s defence application to have the case thrown out because of unreasonable delay. Moore said the trial delays were the fault of Hartman’s lawyers and she sentenced the 38-year-old truck driver to 12 months for assaulting D’Aoust while she slept at the party eight years ago.

At his second trial for the assault, Hartman’s lawyer argued that her client had been asleep when he he pulled down D’Aoust’s pants and sodomized her as she slept on an air mattress with her boyfriend at the party.

Moore rejected the argument, finding that Hartman was drunk, not asleep, when he assaulted the woman.

At the bail hearing on Tuesday, Breault questioned the suitability of Hartman’s girlfriend, Heather Childs, to act as a surety. Childs was also Hartman’s surety in 2016 when he was convicted of having five marijuana plants, a firearm and ammunition at the house they shared, Breault noted.

Sewratten pointed out that the judges in 2016 didn’t think that Hartman’s pot plants and firearm offences were enough to revoke bail back then. If they weren’t enough then, why would they be grounds three years later, he asked.

He said that both Hartman and Childs had learned their lesson, and that the 2016 infractions were the only ones during Hartman’s almost eight years of being on bail.

The lawyer said that Hartman’s 12-month sentence means that he could get parole after three months, and mandatory release after nine months.

If the appeal took nine months, it would mean that Hartman had served his sentence before the appeal was decided, Sewratten said.

Breault argued that the appeal on Hartman’s summary conviction could be heard quickly. She characterized it as a “weak” case.